Monthly Archives December 2010

I decided to try something different with these images from my Steelers vs. Jets game at Heinz Field in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

On my flight home, just to see what it would look like, I made the shot you see above my laptop’s desktop background, and I kind of liked the way it looked, so I’m presenting all the shots from this shoot as screen captures of Desktop backgrounds from my laptop.

(NOTE: These images look MUCH better larger, so click on any photo to see a larger view. Once there, you can click the “Next” button on the top right to move through the gallery).

I was shooting the game as a guest of the Steelers, and it was my first time at Heinz field, and I loved the stadium. When the crowd gets into it, and they start waving their yellow Terrible Towels, it’s a really electric atmosphere.

Frozen Lens Dilemma It snowed all four quarters, but there was very little wind, so although it was 22°F on the field (-5°C), I dressed in multiple layers and so the cold didn’t affect me at all, but it did a number on my lens when I came back out on the field from half time. I started to shoot and my lens wouldn’t focus. I reseated the lens, checked all the knobs, restarted the camera, all the usual stuff, and nothing seemed to work. Then it finally focused on something, but it was all hazy. What had happened was—the lens had fogged up inside, and there was nothing I could do but wait, so I switched to my 70-200mm f/2.8 lens, which for some reason wasn’t fogged up at all, and shot for another 10 minutes or so until the 400mm cleared up.

One of the real highlights of the game for me, surprisingly happened at halftime in the photographers/media room where I ran into one of the best, and best-known pro sports photographers out there today—Bill Frakes. For me, that was cooler than seeing Hines Ward in person. :)

Anyway, here’s a few more, all sized to 1440 x 900 pixels to fit my laptop’s screen size (except for the last image). My camera specs are the same as always for night game (1000 ISO early in the day, during daylight, and 1,600 ISO once it got dark).

Above: Matt Spaeth Spikes the ball in the end zone after catching a touch down pass.

Above: Jet’s Wide Receiver Brad Smith returns the opening kickoff for a touchdown. I was at around the 20 yard line, aiming right at him. It was such a long run, that my buffer filled up right before he got in the end zone (that means, I took 144 continuous high speed shots with the shutter button held down).

A big thanks to Mike Fabus, and the Steeler Organization for their gracious hospitality, and for giving me an opportunity to shoot in such an amazing place, during such an exciting game.

When I ran that video from Larry Becker yesterday, I totally hadn’t thought of the fact that you might not be able to buy those outside the US (I had to laugh at myself after reading some of the comments), so I decided to run another one of his clips.

Now, although this isn’t a “hand-gun” related video, after watching it I’m kind of worried about how easy it will be to find this workaround in other countries as well (expect maybe Cuba and Japan). ;-)

Greetings from the Pittsburgh Marriott Airport hotel, where I’m getting ready to hit the sack after shooting the Steelers vs Jets game at Heinz field earlier today (of course, by the time you read this, I’m probably already home, since I had a 7:00 am flight this morning).

I’ll have all the details on the game tomorrow, and some shots as well, but at game time, it was around 25° F, and it snowed the entire game, so I did want to share an iPhone photo (above) of what my rental car looked like after the game (I started scraping the ice off, then I stopped to take this shot. Being from Florida, I’m not sure I’ve ever scraped ice). ;-)

In the meantime, I want to share the video below with you from my buddy Larry Becker, who runs the new “LarrysCheapShots.com” blog, and has one of the most popular segments on our free weekly show D-Town TV.

Larry is an expert (and I’m using the term “expert” here as a synonym for “totally obsessed”), on saving money on photography gear through a series of clever buys, DIY projects, and basically sidestepping the most painful parts of photography (the high costs) with some brilliant workarounds. Check it out below (Note: Larry posts videos like this every week, along with articles, reviews, and other cool stuff):

On Monday I had posted a visual tour of our headquarters here in Florida, with photos taken by my buddy RC Concepcion (link), and I saw a number of comments from people who wanted to see the other parts of the company (like my office, for example) and people that we didn’t have photos for, so I asked RC if he might head out yesterday, camera in hand, to pick-up some of the people and places we didn’t get to see on Monday. Here we go:

Above: This is where our book and magazine editors live. We had to give them their own special area after they staged a small uprising several years ago in which two guards were injured. That’s Chris Main walking around. You saw his picture on Monday but he wasn’t wearing his Star Trek crew shirt in that photo.

Above: This is one section of our warehouse, and here we store everything from tradeshow booths, to books, to back magazine issues, DVDs, and numerous palettes of Stonewall Kitchen Farmhouse Pancake & Waffle Mix (the 40 oz. size).

Above: This is our Shipping Dept., and when orders come in, everything being shipped that day comes from the warehouse over to this room to be processed, packaged, and sealed with a kiss. (I usually close my eyes during that last part).

Above: This is John from our Shipping Department, and one of the hardest working guys in the building, yet he always has a great attitude. He’s been with us for years, and every time I walk back there I shout out “JOHN!” He always gives me a big smile back and yells back “Hey Scott!” but after all these years he really probably wants to actually yell back, “Scott! Shut up!”

Above: Here’s a shot of my office, down in building 2 (affectionately known as “124” around here). I have an office in both buildings (they’re on the same street), but I spend most of my time down here, because Matt (seen with the laptop here), Dave, Corey, Larry, RC, Kathy, Brad, Ronni, the whole video crew, and a lot of other great folks are all down here. I keep a Fender Strat and amp in my office just to make sure I’m not overly productive. I’m playing Foghat’s “Slow Ride” here, but don’t worry—I have the volume on my amp set pretty low.

Above: This is my other office, the more corporate looking one, down at our Main Building (otherwise known as “333” to our crew). I keep a Fender Telecaster and an amp here to annoy the graphics dept. (they’re just outside my door). The monitor mounted on my wall is there because people got tired of coming behind my desk to see things I was showing them on my laptop.

Above: This is Ronni’s office (and Christmas wonderland), and Ronni is one of my favorite people. She handles our printing and magazine distribution, among many other things, and she’s incredibly good at her job. Ronni’s the first person I see at the office each morning as she’s got the first office in the door, and she has the greatest smile, and the best attitude. Ronni rocks!

Above: This is a hallway between the two sides of building 333 (our main building), and we have a mini-gallery here where we put our own images and images photographers have given us as gifts. A lot of my student’s images from workshops have been proudly displayed here as well.

Above: This is Kleber, who runs Kelby Training (both the live tours and the online training), and I can only guess that’s why he has an office roughly three times the size of mine. He’s got a really important job, and he and his team are just fantastic (plus, he’s got a wall map. They would never give me a wall map).

Above: This is Mike, and although he’s in the editing/publishing side of our business, he doesn’t live with the other editors. He has his own swanky office that is, once again way bigger than mine. I’m not sure I’m really enjoying this tour of our headquarters.

Above: This is Todd in our IT department, and if our computers mess up, he (a) comes and fixes them, and (b) then he yells us at and tells us it was all our fault it messed up in the first place. None of this is true, of course, but it helps propagate existing stereotypes about IT guys (totally kidding, Todd).

Above: This is a rare sight indeed—an Editor actually at her desk. I don’t know why we give them desks, because they’re never there. Editor’s prefer to hang out at Chili’s Restaurant, and at any given time during the work day, you can find five or six of them there with a big basket of Chips & Salsa. That’s Cindy—she’s a Technical Editor, so when I write stuff, she has to test it to see if what I wrote actually works. If it doesn’t work, she has me meet her at Chili’s where she yells at me over Chips & Salsa.

Above: This is part of our Web department, and back in the back is Tommy’s office, the Web big cheese (you saw him, well the top part of him, on Monday). His office is huge. I don’t want to talk about it.

Above: This is Justin on our Web team. Totally cool guy, and a serious musician. He left for a while to go on tour with his band, and when the tour was over, he came back to work. Do we let everybody go on tour like this? Nope. But Justin is that good that we were thrilled to have him back. Plus, I have great respect for anybody who brings their guitar to work. It’s also refreshing to find anyone in this building with an office that’s not bigger than mine.

Above: This is a part of our Customer Service department, and if you call in on the phone, these are the great folks you talk to. Although the colors look like the rest of our offices, they’re actually located in Mumbai, India. I’m totally kidding, but I had you there for a minute, didn’t I?

Above: This is Eddie in our graphics department. He’s the new guy, and a really talented designer, but I’m especially proud to share this image of Eddie because day before yesterday, Eddie became an American Citizen. Way to go, Eddie!!!! Now, if we could just get Dave Cross to defect….

Above: I wish you could see Margie’s face in this photo because she’s another one of my very favorite people. She is an absolutely, off-the-hook, brilliant graphic designer, and I’m constantly amazed at the creative stuff she comes up with. I feel very fortunate to have Margie designing for us. Besides her design work, she is just a wonderful person.

Above: This is Brandon, the “new guy” in our video department, and here he’s pretending to be editing video, but I happen to know that he secretly outsources all his editing tasks to a guy overseas who puts together videos for $1.20 an hour. Brandon was recently voted “Most likely to run a major airline. Or HP.” (Kidding).

Above: This is where some of the video crew work (the others have private offices. Don’t get me started), but we must have turned up the lights in there for this shot, because they normally like to keep it dark and romantic. Plus, they play a lot of Johnny Mathis music and Barry White. They also have the department with the highest birth rate.

Well gang, there you have it. There are still a lot of people missing that I would have loved to share with you, but it’s hard to keep everybody there during the day because we have a Cracker Barrel restaurant nearby. ;-)

Hi gang—Scott here. Brad’s on vacation until the first of year, so I’m covering with a Pimpy Thursday of my own, and I wanted to run this short video from Matt about his just released Photoshop Layers book.

Before you watch the video, you should know;

(1)We produced this book in-house at Kelby Training

(2)Yes, Matt’s a very good friend of mine, and we co-host DTown-TV together

(3) That all being said, his book absolutely kicks butt, and if you want to get better at Photoshop, getting this book will make a big difference.

(4)Yes, it’s that good! (and I’m not just saying that because of #1 and #2)

Watch Matt’s video below because he explains it better than I ever could. If you want to pick it as a Christmas gift for a friend or family member, it’s in stock right now at Barnes & Noble.com, or Amazon.com, or Kelby Training, and Borders.com. You will love it!

A couple of weeks ago I did an interview about my photography with Rick Sammon over at the Digital Photo Experience Podcast, and it just went live yesterday. If you’ve got a few minutes, you can listen in right here.

Thanks to Rick and crew for having me on their show (when Rick and I get together, it’s always a lot of fun), and I hope you guys here on the blog will check it out. :)

About Me

Scott is the President of KelbyOne, an online educational community for Photographers, Photoshop and Lightroom users. He's editor and publisher of Photoshop User Magazine, Conference Technical Chair for the Photoshop World Conference & Expo, and the author of a string of bestselling Photoshop, Lightroom, and photography books.